Queen of My Jungle
You gotta love commitment.
Years ago, my band opened for an act called Tulip Sweet and Her Trail of Tears. Stan the Man got us the gig, and of course he knew a guy in the band (because he always does). The guy he knew played bass and saw (do you call him a “sawyer?”), which was cool. And the night was memorable in several ways.
There was a terrible February snowstorm, two feet as I recall, and the Bug Jar was D-E-A-D. We had a few friends there, but they mostly cleared out after our set, leaving Stephanie (Tulip) and her boys, our band, the sound guy, the bartender, and that’s pretty much it. And she proceeded to perform like Freddie Mercury at the Hollywood Bowl. Like Bjork at the Olympics. Like Prince at the friggin’ Super Bowl. I mean, the girl laid it out there on the floor of the Bug Jar for the 8 of us like we were 80,000. The songs were funny as hell, strangely grandiose, and touched by genius. It’s served ever since as one of my models of how to Bring It when you perform.
I bought her CD, and still listen to it. “Follow the Clown” is its own genre. “Rising Action” both bends gender and mocks gender-bending. But the earworm that keeps getting stuck on me is “Tattoo My Name on Your Ass,” with this fun couplet:
Over flaming hot coals I will make you dance
So turn around baby… and drop your pants
Two years ago, I did in fact tattoo my wife’s image on my… forearm (oh, come on). And as October 21, 2014 comes and goes — the 25th anniversary of our wedding on a rainy and dramatic fall day in Brockport — here I am looking at my little act of commitment to Anne Harris, and pondering the larger theme.
In a real sense, I just got lucky. 20-year-olds are often ruled by chemistry in matters of the heart. And of course I was attracted to the cute brunette who went swimming every day at noon. Athletic but feminine… thick black hair lit with just a touch of red… those amazing green eyes. Yeah, the chemistry worked.
But I was, as friend Tom says, a Hippo Around the Pond, or as friend Karin says, completely “without game.” So it was the other lifeguard, Bronze God that he was, who asked Anne out. And — thank you very much — he told her about me and me about her. We had dance and literature in common, plus a common friend from her college. She dumped him and started asking me out for coffee (daily), and with a push from friend Chuck — who invited the two of us to a “dinner party,” didn’t invite anyone else, made dinner, and then left — eventually I got the picture.
The night of that dinner — July 25, 1986 — we went to see Miche and the Anglos at Jazzberry’s. That band was fabulous live, and we danced a lot. She looked amazing in a tight, sleeveless, black dress, and I was utterly smitten.
I learned very quickly that Anne had that all-out commitment thing in spades. You try running a dance company for 25 years in a largely ambivalent world. It takes fortitude. But it’s more than tenaciousness she has… if you’ve seen her dance, you know. The first time I saw her dance was at Connecticut College. In one piece, the dancers did all sorts of fun tricks with exercise balls. Near the end, a small ball rolled out of the upstage left wing, heading downstage right; then a larger one rolled out in its path; and then Anne dove out of the wing onto an even larger one and travelled the entire diagonal rolling over the three balls. It was a daredevil stunt, and kinda sums her up. Well, a part of her anyway.
She brings that commitment to every moment on stage. It gives her an unaffected theatricality that is rare (on top of her physical ability). I’ve never grown the least bit tired of watching her perform, and I’m often overcome when I do. When she choreographed an evening of work in response to poems from my mother’s book, A Public and Private Hearth, I was completely overwhelmed. It felt like the greatest gift I would ever receive.
People often say nice things to us about our relationship. It’s easy to idealize a relationship (or demonize it) when you’re not in it. The old vaudeville saw holds:
Q: How long you been married?
A: 20 wonderful years! 25 in all…
But it is a great relationship, and maybe I deserve some credit, but sheesh… she is an infuriatingly good person. Talent, yes… creativity, yes… strength, hell yes… but goodness that seems bred in the bone isn’t common, and folks, my girl’s got it. My motives might be sketchy on occasion, but I never question hers.
Our pet names for each other have a bit of bite. She calls me “The Inspector,” and yeah, I deserve that. My inner critic gets out far too pathologically. I call her “The General,” which might sound like code for “bossy” or even a much worse b-word. It’s not. I’ve never minded being led, and Anne is a Lioness, Queen of My Jungle, and absolutely comfortable in her calm regality. I’m a lucky subject of an enlightened despot. And very much in love after all these years.
One Bird in Autumn
for Anne, October 21, 2006
There are days when suddenly the birds
do not sing in the rushing, black pool
before sunrise, although the wind says
there is so much about which to sing.
Our fall anniversary sits among
the ungathered citizens of such days,
but only after seventeen years
does the wind explain itself thus.
The quiet rustling surprises,
abides us. The missing sounds
ask that stones work their places.
The overcast glow begins
and the world tells of color;
the precipitous, recent past
and its level; the coming
of the leaving, when one of us
will remain without the singing
of the one bird that now asserts
itself against striate gray
and the gossiping autumn wind.
